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About Me

I am a Ph.D. student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. I study the History of Biblical Interpretation, which includes Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. My interests are religion, politics, TV, movies, and reading.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Book Write-Up: Language for God in Patristic Tradition

Among church fathers, particularly those adhering to the Alexandrian
tradition of biblical interpretation, there was a sense that the Bible
contained deeper, allegorical, and symbolic meaning, which was pertinent
to living the Christian life. They often accepted the literal or
historical sense of the biblical text, but there were also cases in
which they rejected it. A significant reason for their approach is that
they believed that the surface, literal meaning was either
insignificant or unworthy of God. They did not think that God was
subject to the sorts of passions that afflicted humans, such as anger,
or that God changed his mind, so they did not interpret biblical
passages in which God was angry or changed his mind literally. When
some church fathers read stories about battles in the Hebrew Bible, they
believed that the stories had to be about something more significant
than battles, and so, even if they accepted that the battles were
historical, they thought that they related to the spiritual battles of
Christians to subdue their own sinful passions. In some cases, church
fathers did not necessarily seek a deeper meaning to the text, but
rather offered alternative interpretations that were rather literal.
When the Psalmist displayed a vengeful attitude regarding his enemies,
there were church fathers who were troubled by that because it seemed to
contradict Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies, so one approach they
took was to say that the Psalmist was predicting his enemies’ downfall, not hoping for it.

Mark Sheridan discusses such issues in Language for God in Patristic Tradition. While
this book is primarily about patristic interpretation, Sheridan also
looks extensively at interpretative approaches that were prior to the
church fathers: ancient pagan exegesis, which sought deeper meaning in
Homer because the surface narrative seemed to portray the gods in an
unworthy manner; Philo of Alexandria, who believed that there was deeper
spiritual and philosophical meaning in the laws and stories of the
Hebrew Bible; and the New Testament, which affirmed some traditions of
the Hebrew Bible over others, maintained that the Old Testament was “for
us” (Christians), and claimed to identify deeper Christian meaning in
the Old Testament.

Sheridan quotes from the church fathers, and he also compares and
contrasts ancient exegesis with modern interpretative methods, such as
the historical-critical method, and also the attempts by evangelical
scholars to defend the God of the Old Testament. In discussing
patristic attempts to interpret the creation story in Genesis 1-2,
Sheridan refers to the issues that the church fathers were confronting
at the time, particularly the belief that Genesis 1-2 was overly
mythical; that differs from the issues that surround discussions of
Genesis 1-2 today, such as evolution. In talking about the biblical
Conquest stories and revenge in the Psalms, Sheridan mentions various
approaches that the church fathers take to that issue—-allegorizing the
passages to refer to a spiritual struggle, or simply saying that things
are now done differently under the New Covenant—-and, in some cases,
Sheridan prefers patristic solutions to certain evangelical scholars’
defenses of God.

The book is valuable, not only on account of its extensive
information, its edifying quotations of the church fathers and other
ancient interpreters, and its helpful glossary of significant figures in
the back, but also because it explores why church fathers believed that
the Bible was as it was. One can ask: If the Bible is symbolic or
figurative, or not to be taken literally in areas, is not God, as the
one inspiring the Bible, being deceptive? Why would the Bible say that
God is angry, if God does not actually get angry? Sheridan refers to a
variety of answers that church fathers gave: that God had to portray
himself as human-like so that humans could relate to him; that God did
so for the ignorant; or that God was aiming to get a certain spiritual
response from people. God may portray himself as changing in response
to human behavior, for example, to encourage humans to forsake sin and
pursue righteousness. For the church fathers, Christians can still
appreciate that there is deeper meaning to the text, or that its surface
meaning is not always literally accurate.

Sheridan also discussed the Antioch tradition, which was more focused
on what it considered to be the literal and historical meaning of the
biblical text. I was not entirely satisfied with what Sheridan
described as an Antiochian approach to Galatians 4:24, where Paul uses
allegory. In Galatians 4, Paul is arguing that Hagar and Sarah are
allegories for the system of law and the system of grace, respectively.
How did Antiochians, who shied away from such a symbolic approach to
the Bible, explain Paul’s method here? Sheridan quotes an Antiochian
interpreter who says that Paul was using typology, not allegory: that
Sarah and Hagar were real people, but that they also were types of God’s
Old and New Covenants. I did not entirely understand how the
Antiochians differed from the allegorists, for even many of the
allegorists did not dismiss the literal, historical existence of Sarah
and Hagar. Both sides seemed to believe that Sarah and Hagar were real
historical people, but that they also symbolized other realities. My
problem may not be with Sheridan here, but rather with the Antiochians
themselves.

This is an excellent book, and I recommend it to those who want to
learn more about ancient interpretation, including graduate students who
plan to take a comprehensive examination in the subject (as I did five
years ago).

My thanks for Intervarsity Press for sending me a complimentary review copy of this book.